You've got to make yourself responsible for your emotional reality, because you're the only one who can consistently influence it. Or at least, it's up to you whether you allow others to influence it.
No one denies that people really are victimized. But whether they let that victim vs. perpetrator mindset play out in their other relationships and lived experiences is (with time and practice) up to them.
I do not know what "victim mindset" is supposed to be. Victim is descriptor - something negative was done to you. You don't become victim by looking at things certain way. Nor you do stop being one. If you was robbed, you are robbery victim regardless of what your mindset is.
Most of this is about denying that you might be victim of something either to yourself or to others.
Plus, people actually really do deny that. If you read this article in full, majority of examples are about trying to figure out whether you don't misremember or misrepresent what happened.
In many scenarios you do become a victim by looking at things a certain way. Suppose I get in a nasty fight with a close friend, where she yells at me and calls me all sorts of nasty names and shoves me a bit before running away. There are two different ways I could process that:
* That conversation really spiraled out of control. We should get together, understand what went wrong, and make up.
* I'm an abuse victim! She emotionally abused me and then lightly physically abused me. She'd better apologize for the trauma she put me through.
The first attitude is especially important when I might be misremembering how things went or forgetting about what I was yelling back. But even if I'm 100% confident that my summary is fair and accurate, I don't think the second strategy is healthy, and I'd call the idea that I should embrace it "victim mindset".
The difference between the two options is not just subjective. There is real world difference between misunderstanding and abuse.
The big issue with calling 2 unhealthy mindset is that if you are actually in 'toxic' situation, it prevents you to find solution. This is one of things that makes people stay in abusive relationships. It prevents you to set boundaries, leave or cut people that needs to be cut. "It is just passion spiraling out of control" is real world way how people rationalize staying in abusive relationships. And then everyone is like "why did you not left", well because he/she did not wanted to be victim with unhealthy mindset.
And part of healing is to learn to recognize the situation for what it is and learning to leave.
This is exactly one of my reasons why I object. Because even if you are dealing with narcissist or someone who has abusive habits, you will insist on fault being in the middle, making up, reconciling, enabling.
Also, even in case of conversation spiraling out of control, it should not mean that I have to bend over to make up nor have to have boundaries pushed a bit again and and again each time it spirals. Sometimes, when conversations spiral out of control due to one person lacking self control, it is perfectly ok to NOT make up and decide that I don't have to deal with this.
I just don't agree with the implied dichotomy here, between good people who always treat others well (although they might have misunderstandings) and narcissists with abusive habits. Most people fall in the middle, where they're a bit of a jerk in their own idiosyncratic situations. If you get in a habit of sorting all bad behavior between "misunderstanding" and "abuse", you'll inevitably end up calling a lot of normal behavior abuse and a lot of okay people abusers.
But that does not make abusive situation matter of victims mindset, it is still matter of acts of the one who is doing it.
And when non narcissist acts abusive or have such habits, the very same person acting differently with different people makes no difference. You still have to solve the abusive situation you are in, nit the mutual misunderstanding nor things "spiralling out of control of no one's fault".
There are situations where you're disempowered, taken advantage of, or abused.
Some people inappropriately generalize those experiences, and instead of being (appropriately) aware of the possibility of mistreatment or risk, they expect such treatment or interpret all treatment through such a lens.
There's no need to deny that you might be a victim. My ex-girlfriend cheated on me, and maybe my current one will too. But recognizing that possibility doesn't mean orienting my approach to the relationship around it, and in fact being clear about what boundaries/behaviors make me feel safe empowers me. Viewing myself as (fundamentally) a victim rather than someone who was a victim in a specific past circumstance does the opposite.
The article might get it wrong in some ways, but the fundamental responsibility for one's self and one's emotional well-being is still an important point.
Precisely. Which is why recognizing that other's actions aren't about you and don't have to disempower you is part of undoing the view of yourself as a perpetual victim and a view of others as having more power over you than they do.
> Pretending that other people cant affect you and cant harm you is just nonsense.
Yes, that's right. Which is why I mentioned thinking about "others as having more power over you than they do" and acknowledged upthread that "There are situations where you're disempowered, taken advantage of, or abused."
I think you're hearing me say something like "no one is victimized." Far from it. People really are victimized, and they are victims in those situations.
But the question is whether, over time, they continue to engage with the world primarily as victims or whether their victimization is an event that's placed in the past.
I mentioned being cheated on. I do not believe that "maybe cheating was my fault or maybe I remember it wrong." I remember it very well, and I am absolutely confident that my ex's decisions and actions were hers and hers alone. I also spent a fair amount of time in pain.
Now, I could go forward in the world continuing to feel that pain. I could go forward in the world thinking things like "I won't ever be in a healthy, trusting relationship" or "next time, I need to have more control over my partner" or "it must be that I'm an inadequate man."
But I don't. Was I a victim? Yes. Do I have that victim mindset? No.
I was bullied as a child. Well into adulthood, I held on to a number of victim-oriented views, such as: people probably don't like me; other men are threats; I can't be friends with men. That's the bullshit. This painful series of events happened to me when I was young, but I took lessons about how children treated me and overgeneralized from them.
Can people still affect me and harm me? Yes, of course! But I don't need to go around looking over my shoulder and expecting that from everyone. I can remove myself from situations; I can fight back; I can call out the harmful behavior. I'm not in the victim mindset of "other people are hurting me and there's nothing I can do." I'm in the empowered mindset of "other people might hurt me, but there are things I can do about that."
Along with that, I've realized that some people won't like me, but that's up to them, and others do like me. And that some men are threats, but others are kind, and I can choose which men I associate with.
Like I said earlier, no one is denying victimhood. But it's a victim mindset to generalize painful and disempowering experiences, and make those the primary lens in your mental view of the world.
If someone has told you to shut up about uncomfortable things to hear that have happened to you, I'm sorry. That's wrong. In fact, changing your worldview generally requires digging into those things that have happened to you. But a lot of people take and advocate the unhealthy approach of "just suck it up" or telling someone to "stop playing the victim" without recognizing the hard and somewhat lengthy journey it can take to actually develop and reinforce a healthier more empowered worldview.
> I held on to a number of victim-oriented views, such as: people probably don't like me; other men are threats; I can't be friends with men. That's the bullshit. This painful series of events happened to me when I was young, but I took lessons about how children treated me and overgeneralized from them.
None of that is "victim oriented". It seems to me that you are seriously invested into making the word "victim" into something bad.
The mindset you describe is "victim mindset" only because you want that word to mean something bad. You do project everything bad you possibly can into it. I mean, yeah, fear and over-correction are all withing range of normal initial reactions to disempowering situation. Just like they are perfectly normal reaction to getting into car crash.
Then again, other people do get themselves into same situations again and again because they just cant admit to themselves that they are victims in those situations. Which is less likely to happen with car crash.
But only in one case people do work hard to stigmatize the descriptor word. When you are afraid of cars after car crash, people do generally recommend you therapy, but they wont be like "victim mindset you are bad one it is all supposed to be always under your control".
This isn't something I'm just making up. You can read the Wikipedia article[0] about it, as a starting point, or dig further into transactional analysis or the Karpman drama triangle.[1]
I don't want to turn "victim" into mean something bad—rather, as you've made pains to point out, victims have legitimately bad things happen to them, and that's... bad.
Holding onto that pain in the long run is bad, too. It's not about the "initial reaction"—of course fear and anger and whatnot happens! It's about whether one reifies and adopts those initial reactions as a worldview, or whether one places the event in context, learns the appropriate lessons, and moves forward.
I mean, do you think the following views of the world are good and healthy for people to hold?
- that their lives are a series of challenges directly aimed at them;
- that most aspects of life are negative and beyond their control;
- that because of the challenges in their lives, they deserve sympathy;
- that as they have little power to change things, little action should be taken to improve their problems.
No one denies that people really are victimized. But whether they let that victim vs. perpetrator mindset play out in their other relationships and lived experiences is (with time and practice) up to them.